Sunday, October 30, 2005

Michigan can savor victory

By Lynn Henning / The Detroit News

John T. Greilick / The Detroit News Northwestern's Mark Philmore catches a 34-yard touchdown pass over cornerback Grant Mason in the second quarter. But Michigan's defense stiffened in the second half. Related links  NCAA football scores and stats Big Ten Talk Big Ten Weblog U-M schedule U-M roster U-M stats Big Ten schedule Big Ten standings Big Ten stats AP Top-25 poll USA Today / ESPN Top-25 poll Sports Challenge: Pick the college winners weekly, win prizes Game photo galleries U-M 33, N. Illinois 17 Notre Dame 17, U-M 10 U-M 55, EMU 0 Comment on this story Send this story to a friend Get Home Delivery

EVANSTON, Ill. -- You play Northwestern as you would host difficult in-laws for the weekend. Just get through it. The idea is to take charge and make it work.

There will be tense moments. But if you plan well and ponder how good it will feel Sunday night to have pulled it all off -- speaking terms are required -- then it's worth the effort and doubly worthy of clinking a glass to victory.

Michigan would have been forgiven Saturday night for spitting at the rules and serving a splash of something spirited to a football team that deserved a salute. U-M beat Northwestern, 33-17, beneath the lights and haze-covered sky at Ryan Field, taking down a Wildcats team that loves to pop pretty-boy opponents.

Michigan beat Northwestern with the same resolve it took to Iowa City a week earlier. The Wolverines did it with the same healthy dose of desperation they threw at Penn State earlier this month, at the point they were one lousy play from crashing their season.

On Saturday night, they grabbed one of the slickest quarterbacks in the business, Northwestern's Brett Basanez, and held him to a fairly normal game for a guy who throws footballs the way those White Sox guys down the road throw baseballs.

Michigan should savor this one. Here was a species of game waiting to devour a team with ideas of yet winning a Big Ten championship. It instead went down as one more reason why Lloyd Carr's team could make 2005 special, which wasn't the prevailing forecast following that awful last-minutes loss to Minnesota three weeks ago.

The Wolverines did precisely what was scripted Saturday. They spotted Basanez 149 yards passing in the first quarter -- a nifty 596-yard night had that pace continued -- then clamped down in the second half.

Basanez was 2-for-8 for all of 9 yards in the third quarter as Michigan ran with his receivers and choked off those gulches that he had been finding earlier in the game.

Then the Wolverines took care of another issue: the clock. Michigan State had seen a week earlier what can happen when Northwestern and Basanez have their rhythm and the football. They get to the end zone the way Jared gets to a Subway sandwich, which isn't the kind of game Michigan could afford to play Saturday.

Mike Hart was gone at running back. Chad Henne, who is having, at best, a serviceable sophomore season, hasn't been the lights-out quarterback he was threatening to become a year ago.

But he played well enough Saturday, which is what Michigan needed as it ground out scoring drives -- either a touchdown or a field goal -- that chewed enough clock to keep Northwestern behind, and away from that unconscious offensive mind-set that has destroyed all sorts of teams in 2005.

Thus, Michigan is becoming the Michigan most folks regularly observe at about this time of year. The Wolverines are migrating toward the schedule's southernmost end, buoyed by three big victories in a row, hobbled only by two conference losses to go with a slip-up against Notre Dame.

Hart should be back, at least by the time Ohio State pulls into Ann Arbor. That's good news for Michigan no matter how sturdily Kevin Grady and Jerome Jackson ran the football against Northwestern.

Michigan needs Hart to be the same relative force in three weeks as Tim Biakabatuka was a decade ago, when Ohio State came to Michigan Stadium and left town with Biakabatuka's hoof marks stenciled into its jerseys.

The Wolverines' defense is another matter. They have fresh faces in the secondary, where injuries have been almost as merciless as they've been to the offensive line. But you can see on both sides of the ball that folks are figuring out their jobs, as well as their potential to become pretty good football players before snow flies.

LaMarr Woodley wasn't around Saturday night -- deep arm bruise -- but the linebackers did an admirable job of keeping Northwestern and Basanez honest.

It looked Saturday night as if a good football team finally realized it's just that. It points to another November when the only thing in these parts as regular as the wing on the Thanksgiving turkey is stoking up for Michigan-Ohio State.

You can reach Lynn Henning at (313) 222-2472 lynn.henning@detnews.com.